page_title: Jean-Baptiste Kléber
section_title: French Revolutionary Wars
hierarchical_section_title: Jean-Baptiste Kléber / Biography / French Revolutionary Wars
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: La statue du Général Kléber à Strasbourg, France. Erigée en 1840, elle avait été enlevée par les Allemands en 1940, mais retourna sur son socle en 1945.
context_page_description: Jean-Baptiste Kléber was a French general during the French Revolutionary Wars. After having served one year in the French Royal Army, he entered Habsburg service seven years later. But his plebeian ancestry hindered his opportunities. Eventually, he volunteered for the French Army in 1792 and quickly rose through the ranks.
  Kléber served in the Rhineland during the War of the First Coalition, and also suppressed the Vendée Revolt. He retired to private life in the peaceful interim after the Treaty of Campo Formio, but returned to military service to accompany Napoleon in the Egyptian Campaign in 1798–99. When Napoleon left Egypt to return to Paris, he appointed Kléber as commander of the French forces. He was assassinated by a student in Cairo in 1800.
  A trained architect, Kléber, in times of peace, designed a number of buildings.
context_section_description: In 1792 he enlisted in the Haut-Rhin volunteers. Thanks to his military knowledge, he at once gained election as adjutant and soon afterward as lieutenant-colonel. At the defense of Mainz (July 1793) he so distinguished himself that though disgraced along with the rest of the garrison and imprisoned, he promptly won reinstatement, and became in August 1793 a général de brigade. He won considerable distinction in the suppression of the Vendéans, and two months later gained promotion to général de division. In these operations began his intimacy with Marceau, with whom he defeated the Royalists at Le Mans and Savenay. When he openly expressed his opinion that the Vendéans merited lenient measures, the authorities recalled him; but re-instated him once more in April 1794  and sent him to the Armée de Sambre-et-Meuse.
  He displayed his skill and bravery in the numerous actions around Charleroi, and especially in the crowning victory of Fleurus (26 June 1794), after which in the winter of 1794 – 1795 he besieged Mainz. In 1795, and again in 1796, he held the chief command of an army temporarily, but declined a permanent appointment as commander-in-chief. On 13 October 1795 he fought a brilliant rearguard action at the bridge of Neuwied, and in the offensive campaign of 1796, he served as Jourdan's most active and successful lieutenant, with his victory at Siegburg on 1 June that year enabling Jourdan to get the bulk of the French force across the Rhine.
caption: Statue of Kléber on the Place Kléber at Strasbourg
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